Jazz Metropolis And Crowd Puller: 12th Jazzahead! Achieves New Visitor And Participant Record

The 12th jazzahead! ended in Bremen on Sunday. The international exhibition and festival in Bremen ensured packed concert halls at the Bremen Exhibition Centre and a new participant record amongst exhibitors and participants from 60 countries. With approximately 17,600 visitors at the exhibition and concerts last weekend alone, the jazzahead! audience has, once again, grown.

Exhibition with more participants

1,356 exhibiting companies (2016: 969) and 3,169 professional participants (2016: 2,742) came to the jazzahead! trade fair. Already on the first evening, the increased visitor number led to full concert halls at the Finnish night. “The Thursday was also busier than in past years and the stands and aisles were noticeably full already just after the exhibition opening. “ states Hans Peter Schneider, CEO of Bremen Exhibition Centre & ÖVB-Arena

Showcase festival sold out

The showcase concerts on Friday and Saturday night were completely sold out and even the afternoon concerts had only few available seats. Uli Beckerhoff, one of two artistic directors of jazzahead!, spoke to the bands of the showcase festival and said: “All bands of the showcase concerts with whom I spoke were overwhelmed by the great public response both in terms of the sheer visitor number as well as the incredibly positive reaction to their music.”

jazzahead! clubnight with visitor record

The jazzahead! clubnight was also more popular than the previous year. With a significant visitor increase of more than 16%, the programme, incorporating 40 performance venues, attracted a total of 7,562 visitors which is 1,000 more than in 2016. Several of the centrally located venues, in particular, proved to be real crowd pullers.

Symposium for strengthening jazz in education

The start of this year’s exhibition included a full-day symposium “Improvisation and jazz for children” which was attended by 80 musicians, teachers, musical mediators, organisers and associations from throughout the country. “The lectures and discussions conveyed the necessity of deepening this subject further and institutionalising it in the long term,” says jazzahead! project manager Sybille Kornitschky. Jazzahead! understands this need as an assignment and is seeking national project partners for future symposiums on this subject.

Partner country 2018: Poland

After the successful focus on Finland, this honour was passed on to Poland on the Sunday morning at Bremen Exhibition Center and the country will be at the centre of the international trade fair and city-wide festival in 2018. This will also be the first time that the jazzahead! will have a partner country from Eastern Europe. Michał Hajduk from the Adam Mickiewicz Institute said about the future partner country: “Jazz is a genre that has its beginnings in the breakthrough of liberty movements in Poland. Jazz moved to the underground to become, in a sense, a synonym of the language of freedom. It is worth mentioning that in spite of all difficult conditions, one of the first jazz festivals in Europe was organised in Poland. The 1956 International Jazz Festival in Sopot was visited by over 50,000 participants. Since then, Polish jazz has become a forerunner of an independent, dynamic and bold scene, reflecting everything that is daring, ambitious and innovative. We are honoured to present the potential of the contemporary Polish jazz scene in Bremen.”

Showcase recordings available at media library and ARTE Concert

Those who were unable to attend the 40 showcase concerts or who would like to see them again can watch all recordings on the jazzahead! website as well as several of the concerts from the Kulturzentrum Schlachthof on ARTE Concert.

At this time in my life, I'm finally able to express myself through jazz as I have always wanted by becoming fully immersed in the music and lyrics. I love performing American Jazz
Standards and surrounding myself with world class musicians

At this time in my life, I'm finally able to express myself through jazz as I have always wanted by becoming fully immersed in the music and lyrics. I love performing American Jazz
Standards and surrounding myself with world class musicians. There is no other feeling as fulfilling as performing jazz.